I realise my earlier email was imprecise. I am mostly lamenting the
mis-feature (IMO) that labels get evaluated as macros within the internals
of -graph- even though they are not even macros to begin with. Nor are they
passed as arguments by the user. Once a label is defined, it should always
continue to be treated as a string literal, i.e. no macro interpolation
should be done.
The SMCL work-around works only in ytitle() or title() options, it doesn't
work when setting variable labels, e.g.
. la var xrus "{c $|}US per {c $|}CA"
doesn't work the same way. It is not a serious nuisance but is still
unfortunate; it doesn't reward the overhead of having diligently labelled
one's data.
Patrick Joly
Nick wrote
> This is indeed a nuisance when you want something
> different from Stata's treatment here. The cross-reference
> implied is to the thread started by Phil Ryan on
> 21 May. See e.g.
>
> http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/lwgate/STATALIST/archives/
> statalist.0405/Author/article-740.html
>
> The story there is that using the escape character
> works only so far as the next program called, which
> sees e.g. $US or $CA and misinterprets those
> as references to global macros. The story there
> also is that using SMCL provides an existing
> work-around.
>
> Patrick clearly flagged this as a question
> for StataCorp, but it would seem 20 years too
> late to undefine $ as indicating global macros.
>
> Possibly StataCorp can define c($) as the dollar
> symbol as a less cryptic alternative to {c S|}
> or `=char(36)'. No idea how difficult that would
> be.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected]
> > [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
> > [email protected]
> > Sent: 14 June 2004 21:53
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: st: Escaping dollar sign in graphs
> >
> >
> > This problem came up on the list a few weeks but I would like
> > to ask Stata
> > whether something can be done about this issue. Specifically,
> > the problem is
> > that, given a have variable whose label contains a dollar sign say
> >
> > . la var xrus "\$US per \$CA"
> >
> > and trying to plot it as either
> >
> > . twoway line xrus year
> > . twoway line xrus year, ytitle("\$US per \$CA")
> >
> > causes the currency units to vanish from the y-axis title,
> > leaving only "
> > per " behind.
> >
> > This is a bug isn't it? Or a very unfortunate mis-feature
> > IMO. It *should*
> > be possible to print basic ASCII characters set in graphs.
> > Can something be
> > done about this, this is particularly troublesome for economists.
> >
> >
> > Patrick Joly
> > *
> > * For searches and help try:
> > * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> > * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> > * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> >
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
*
* For searches and help try:
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* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
